Leviticus 3:7

Summary

Leviticus 3:7 addresses the case in which the animal chosen for a particular offering is a young ram. It specifies that this animal must be brought and presented before Yehovah.

Key words

• Ke.sev ("a young ram", H3775) — masculine singular noun naming the specific animal type covered by this conditional clause.
• mak.Riv ("presenting", H7126H) — hiphil participle, causative form indicating the one who actively brings/causes the offering to be brought; describes an ongoing or characteristic action ("the one doing").
• ka.re.ba.N ("present/offering", H7133A) — masculine singular construct noun with the suffix o ("his"), meaning "his offering," linking the animal to the offerer.
• hik.Riv ("he will present", H7126H) — hiphil sequential perfect, continuing the narrative/legal sequence begun by the participle; same causative root as mak.Riv, showing repetition of the presenting action in a different grammatical aspect.
• f.Nei ("before/face of", H6440G) — masculine plural construct noun, literally "faces of," forming the idiom "before Yehovah" that marks the location/context of the presentation.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A), followed by Ke.sev hu' — "a ram, he" — placing the animal noun before the pronoun hu' ("he", H1931) and the participle mak.Riv. This word order foregrounds the type of animal as the topic of the conditional clause, rather than the action itself: the structure is closer to "if a ram — he is the one presenting his offering" than a simple "if he presents a ram."

The clause then shifts from the participle mak.Riv to the sequential perfect hik.Riv, both built on the same hiphil root H7126H ("to cause to come near / present"). This grammatical shift — from participle to sequential perfect — marks a transition from describing the condition (the ongoing situation of the offerer bringing a ram) to stating the resulting required action (he will present it). The direct object marker 'et (H0853) appears twice, marking first ka.re.ba.N ("his offering") and then 'o.T ("it"), keeping the grammatical object explicit though untranslated in English.

The phrase li-f.Nei Yah.weh ("before Yehovah") uses the construct plural noun f.Nei ("faces of", H6440G) governed by the preposition li (H9005), forming a fixed idiom that indicates the presentation occurs in the presence/location associated with Yehovah (H3068G).

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders Ke.sev ("young ram") as ἄρνα ("lamb"), a term that in the Greek text corresponds more closely to "lamb" than to the Hebrew's more specific "young ram" category. The Vulgate uses agnum ("lamb"), aligning with the LXX's rendering rather than preserving a distinct term for the Hebrew Ke.sev. The Hebrew repeats the causative root H7126H twice (participle then sequential perfect), while the Vulgate compresses the clause into a single verb, obtulerit ("he shall have offered"), not reflecting the two-stage verbal structure visible in the Hebrew.